21.10.2024 Salary

Payment of wages to contractors – draft amendment to legislation


The currently consulted draft bill on minimum wages introduces a new obligation for contracting parties. It concerns the deadline for payment of wages under civil law contracts.

Paying the contractor by the 10th of the following month?

The draft act prepared by the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, which aims to implement the provisions of the directive regarding the minimum remuneration into Polish law, includes a provision regarding the obligation to pay remuneration in the amount resulting from the minimum hourly rate under a civil law contract concluded for a period longer than 1 month by the 10th day of the following month.

For contracting parties, the implementation of the above obligation will mean the requirement to comply with the deadline set by law and to record the number of hours of order fulfilment or provision of services. Moreover, the entrepreneur for whom the order is executed or services are provided will store documents specifying the method of confirming the number of hours of order execution or service provision and documents confirming the number of hours of order execution or service provision for a period of 3 years from the date on which the remuneration became due.

Let us recall that currently, in accordance with the regulations, the contracting party pays remuneration under a contract of mandate concluded for a period longer than one month at least once a month. However, the payment deadline results from the content of the contract itself.

When discussing the issue of paying an hourly contractor’s wage, it is necessary to mention the amount of the hourly rate. From 1 January 2025, the minimum hourly rate will be PLN 30.50 gross. Learn more: Minimum wage in 2025. Regulation published in the Journal of Laws

Obligations of the contracting party and statutory sanctions

The proposed act specifies not only the scope of rights and obligations, but also the rules on sanctions resulting from failure to comply with its provisions.

In Section III, Article 22 of the draft act we read:

Whoever, contrary to his or her obligation, being an entrepreneur or acting on behalf of an entrepreneur or another organizational unit:

  1. pays the person accepting a mandate or providing services the remuneration for each hour of performance of the mandate or provision of services at an amount lower than the applicable minimum hourly rate,
  2. person accepting a mandate or providing services the remuneration for each hour of performance of the mandate or provision of services,

– is subject to a fine of PLN 1,500 to PLN 45,000.

The provision proposed in the draft bill cited above therefore provides for an increase in sanctions. Let us recall that at present, failure to comply with the provisions concerning the minimum hourly rate in the case of contracts of mandate and service provision is punishable by a fine from PLN 1,000 to PLN 30,000.

Contract of mandate – definition and statistical data   

A contract of mandate is a contract regulated by the provisions of the Civil Code, which means that it belongs to the group of so-called civil law contracts. It is therefore not subject to the same rules as employment contracts, which may be an advantage for contracting parties in certain situations, currently guaranteeing greater freedom of action. Read also: Full ZUS for mandate contracts. The government wants to reform the labour market

The basic characteristics of the mandate contract are presented in Art. 734 Ҥ 1 of the Civil Code, which states: By the mandate contract, the person accepting the mandate undertakes to perform a specified legal act for the person giving the mandate.

The contract of mandate is a fairly popular form of cooperation. According to data from the Central Statistical Office (GUS), on the last day of March 2024, 2,292.3 thousand people worked in Poland under contracts of mandate and similar contracts. Among contractors, the share of women was slightly higher, constituting 51.3% of all people working under contracts of mandate and similar contracts. Moreover, mandate contracts were mainly used in the private sector, in which 89.1% of the total number of contractors were concentrated.

Read also: Civil law contracts and JDGs counted to seniority?

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